Quote from: Lori Dee on October 09, 2025, 08:32:29 AMNo wonder people go to foreign countries to have surgery.
Imagine how much money the local healthcare industry is losing due to its own neglect. Not just money, but expertise. The best surgeons will go where they get paid, and with plenty of patients, their skills stay honed and they stay up to date on the latest technology and technique.
Any wonder why Thailand has such excellent gender-affirming healthcare, by top-rated surgeons in state-of-the-art medical centers? Because they can afford it.
We would never have that problem in New TransZealand. 😄
That's kind of the thing, Lori. With the NHS it isn't about losing money. The NHS isn't an industry, as such. In spite of what sometimes people want it to be. The last government we had was kind of big on this idea... of making it into an industry where it was about a business model. Trump even wanted to buy part of it.
This article is talking about people who get their care under the NHS, at basically no cost to themselves other than the National Insurance that all UK people have to pay as a tax. If you go private, then it becomes more like the US healthcare system. Where money can buy you anything, in a relatively short timeframe. But you need to have the money. We don't really have healthcare insurance in the same way you folks do over there. You pay out of your own pocket unless you take out private health insurance, on top of what you're already paying towards the NHS. Jobs don't often cover things like that because they already cover the cost of your National Insurance payments. In the UK, private healthcare is kind of a second layer of treatment on top of what everyone is already paying for, by law.
Most people, most of the time, go through the NHS. Where waiting lists for pretty much everything are longer than you would expect. Because it's nationalised medicine. When you can just pay for people to do stuff straight away, then stuff gets done. But when you have thousands of people needing a few people to do things so they don't have to pay people to do stuff on top of what they already pay... then backlogs happen. They happen for everything. Gender affirming care has dropped lower and lower down the priority list over the last few years... I think we all know why. But hospitals have always been, and probably always will be understaffed, underskilled and underpaid because like you say... it's more lucrative for people to engage in private medicine. Where they can make more money. For some people it is "How can I help people?", but for most it's "How can I afford that Ferrari?".
Things take different priorities with the budget the NHS has, depending a lot on who's in charge. Or what's in the headlines that particular week. If trans folks are under a sustained campaign of "You don't exist", then that priority is going to be lower, compared to other stuff. That doesn't mean it's less important, it just means that the zeitgeist of the day sees it as less important. So money and time isn't allocated to it over other things. It's mostly populism and politics which determines what is at the top of the agenda.
I am not surprised by this article at all, honestly. Not in today's climate, and having an idea of how the NHS works.
